As the buzzer sounded last night, barely audible through the riotous cheers in Key Arena, Sonics point guard Luke Ridnour chucked the basketball in the air, presumably to celebrate a victory in a nail-biter of a game. To celebrate snapping a 14-game losing streak, the longest in franchise history. To celebrate beating the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs. To celebrate the damn near impossible.

Time froze for me as I watched that ball fly, because for whatever reason, Ridnour hurled it toward the opposing basket. In that moment, in spite of the crowd’s roar, my ears heard absolutely nothing in Key Arena, save one low, guttural whisper—the mumblings of Sonics chairman Clay Bennett. “Make it make it make it make it make it.”

But even the owner’s anti-Seattle hopes couldn’t will that ball into hilariously tying the game back up, sending it into overtime and somehow screwing the Sonics into yet another loss. Nor could a seemingly endless series of awful referee calls—during the game, I saw three clean blocks called as fouls against Seattle, turning our team’s surprising and promising defensive boost into a frigging liability as the San An Floppers flailed and faked to keep themselves in the game. And even when the Sonics’ defense fell apart in the fourth quarter—as it always does, PJ—the Spurs couldn’t capitalize on it, jacking up awful open shot after awful open shot to continue the champs’ descent into mid-season mediocrity (now 11-13 in their past 24 games, making this loss a little less surprising than it should be). 88-85. I watched the whole thing in person and barely believed it myself.

But the Spurs lost this game as much as the Sonics won it. Kevin Durant started strong and delivered a clutch go-ahead jumper in the game’s final minutes. Johan Petro whooped some ass in his few minutes on the court, blocking shots on one end and rattling the rim on the other. Nick Collison’s few minutes were similarly tenacious (though muted by those awful calls). Lots of scrambling, fighting and tipping led to the team’s key victory in outrebounding the Spurs. And in spite of the entire crowd screaming “DON’T SHOOT THE BALL, KURT THOMAS,” the center managed to sink two clutch jumpers in the fourth, both of which rattled atop the rim long enough to give Bennett a temporary, schadenfreude-induced hard-on.

The Western Conference may be all but lost—as might the team’s hometown status—but at least the players aren’t acting like it.